ZX Spectrum- It Lives!!!

[AlWo73]

Hi folks.

I recently set up a website called ZX Spectrum- It Lives!!! it's packed with games reviews, with an emphasis on more obscure games, both new and ancient.
It also features several spurious Top 100s for people to argue about, and regular features such as 'The Games Time Forgot' which showcases 5 games from specific years which never got reviewed in the big 3 mags.

And there's dinosaurs.

If you're interested, the link is:

https://sites.google.com/view/zxspectrum-itlives/part-1

Thanks all,
Al

[Einar Saukas]

It's an interesting site.

However every multicolor game have corrupted screenshots: Buzzsaw, Old Tower, El Stompo, Snake Escape, Alter Ego 2, Twinlight, Gluf, Sun Bucket, Complica DX, etc. Could you PLEASE fix them all?

[AlWo73]

Hi Einar, thanks for the feedback.

All great games by the way, respect!

Strange, the screenshots look okay on my phone and laptop, but I'll ask a more technical friend of mine for his advice and endeavour to fix if possible.

Thanks,
Al

[Nitrowing]

Screenshots look fine on my phone

[Einar Saukas]

This is how I see BUZZSAW+ at your site:



This is how it should look like:



Also this is how I see SNAKE ESCAPE at your site:



This is how it should look like:



Do you see anything different?

Please take a look. Thanks!

[AlWo73]

Aha, I see. Thanks Einar. Will get them fixed and report back soon

[Ivanzx]

I quickly checked the site yesterday and I liked it a lot. Nice balance of Homebrew and old releases (in general Homebrew tends to be ignored, which is so bad, as the best games ever for the Speccy are Homebrew), nice balance in content, with different features and easy to read and with some humour, congrats

[AlWo73]

Hi Ivanzx. Thanks for your comments, I'm delighted you like the site. Yep I'm trying to show the best of the more recent Speccy scene, generally trying to dig out those titles which haven't had much coverage elsewhere. Also the more obscure old stuff, mostly so I'm not repeating other people's opinions throughout the years too much if possible. Although having said that this week I'll be reviewing Kosmic Kanga and Worse Things Happen At Sea, so you've got to throw in the odd old classic

Cheers again for the support, it's appreciated.
Al

[Morkin]

I'll be reviewing Kosmic Kanga

Hi Al, just to say that you've already got Kosmic ('effing') Kanga listed but I believe you have accidentally placed it in your top 100 list rather than the worst 100 list (in which it should probably be in the top 10).

...Apart from that glaring error, an entertaining read...

[Pobulous]

One other slight nitpic is that a lot of screenshots look like they have an MSX-ish palette rather than the standard Spectrum one - particularly with the washed out reds.

Compare the Emlyn Hughes screenshot with one from the archive on this site.

[XTM]

I feel bad for adding to the criticsim, but apart from the "wrong colours", there are also duplicated pixel rows/columns in some screenshots ... that's a no-go.

Zoom in on those, for example ...

Marauder
Last Ninja 2

[AlWo73]

I'll be reviewing Kosmic Kanga

Hi Al, just to say that you've already got Kosmic ('effing') Kanga listed but I believe you have accidentally placed it in your top 100 list rather than the worst 100 list (in which it should probably be in the top 10).

...Apart from that glaring error, an entertaining read...

They don't call it Marmite Kanga for nothing. If I've invented that, I've got dibs on it. Glad you liked the site otherwise sir

[AlWo73]

I feel bad for adding to the criticsim, but apart from the "wrong colours", there are also duplicated pixel rows/columns in some screenshots ... that's a no-go.

Zoom in on those, for example ...

Marauder
Last Ninja 2

Thanks for checking out the site and for your feedback. I'm a bit too scared to zoom in on any of my screenshots, I'm still getting used to these new glasses, so you're a braver man than me, sir! Will bear this in mind for the future

[AlWo73]

One other slight nitpic is that a lot of screenshots look like they have an MSX-ish palette rather than the standard Spectrum one - particularly with the washed out reds.

Compare the Emlyn Hughes screenshot with one from the archive on this site.

Thanks for checking out the site and for your feedback. If I'm honest, I'm delighted people are focusing on the screenshots rather than the sub-standard content
Something for me to work on though, so cheers!

[PeterJ]

@AlWo73,

As long as you provide a link back to our site, I'm very happy for you to use any images from our main site.

Peter

[AlWo73]

@AlWo73,

As long as you provide a link back to our site, I'm very happy for you to use any images from our main site.

Peter

Thanks Peter, will do.

[AlWo73]

Thanks to all who have mentioned some issues with some of the screenshots on my website. I have replaced the ones mentioned with the screens on Spectrum Computing, for which thanks to them too. I've credited them at the start of the site.

Looks even nicer now, so muchos gracias all

[Pobulous]

Thanks to all who have mentioned some issues with some of the screenshots on my website. I have replaced the ones mentioned with the screens on Spectrum Computing, for which thanks to them too. I've credited them at the start of the site.

Looks even nicer now, so muchos gracias all

Out of interest, which emulator did you grab the screens from and does it show different colurs with ULA+ enabled or disabled?
I've noticed that the screenshots for Bufonada (on the itch.io site) also have the wrong colours for bright blue and bright red.

[AlWo73]

Thanks to all who have mentioned some issues with some of the screenshots on my website. I have replaced the ones mentioned with the screens on Spectrum Computing, for which thanks to them too. I've credited them at the start of the site.

Looks even nicer now, so muchos gracias all

Out of interest, which emulator did you grab the screens from and does it show different colurs with ULA+ enabled or disabled?
I've noticed that the screenshots for Bufonada (on the itch.io site) also have the wrong colours for bright blue and bright red.

Hi. I use an emulator called Speccy Deluxe which does have a ULA option, but playing Snake Escape as a test, it's still rather too orange either way. But using Fuse on my laptop it looks right. I'll have to watch out for that in future methinks.

Thanks again for the advice

[flatduckrecords]

I think it might be a colour profiles issue - crops up from time to time on the Guess the screen$ thread as well.


[embiggen] .

(This is just an approximation but hopefully it illustrates the issue. The reds look a bit orangey and the blues look a bit purpley. Top two are screenshots I just took in Fuse, but with different profiles applied. The bottom image is from Itch, the info panel shows the colour profile for it.)

Looks like the screenshots on Itch were saved with The GIMP's generic sRGB profile but (I guess?) without matching the colour values to that colour space. When the image is displayed in the browser the colours look a bit off becuase it doesn't match the colour profile of the host operating system on which the screenshots were taken.

Possible solutions are to re-export the image so that the colours match a common profile (e.g. sRGB). This process alters the values but makes it display correctly. Or embed the correct colour profile information into the image file - but I'm not sure if that's supported in all web browsers (older browsers might ignore the profile and just display the slightly-off colours anyway, I'm not sure).

(I don't think this is the issue with the rainbow graphics games though, that must be something else - probably timing and how the screen is generated?).

[4thRock]

Indeed, it might be a colour space /colour profile issue. The default colour space format for internet images is sRGB, but that's an old standard. Many devices now use wider spaces, and browsers / operating systems will convert them for display.

For example, here's a colour cube encoded as sRGB:

Here's the same cube encoded as BT2020 (wider colour space, used on 4K HDR):

My devices try to convert BT2020 to sRGB as expected, maxing the saturation of the second cube much sooner (look at the gradient starting from the center white point). I think this is what most people will see, but as I said it's device-dependent...

Most importantly, RGB values on both cubes are exactly the same (ex: 255,0,0 for Red). The only change is colour space tagging.

So as mentioned in the previous post, spectrum palette values might be interpreted differently, especially if a mobile device is being used.
Android mobiles are usually set by default set to "vivid" screen mode, meaning something like a DCI-P3 colorspace (wider than sRGB). Screencaps might be affected by this, as support for color space tags is not universal. For consistency it's best to use the "natural" screen mode on Android, which corresponds to the sRGB standard.

(This is a complex issue, I hope I haven't confused anyone even more )

[Pobulous]

I thought that, too, but felt the difference was too big.

I've just tested with Speccy, and the bright colours are indeed washed out as default.
However there is an option under Video->Color Palette to switch to RealSpectrum Colors
Under that setting, the colors look much the same as Fuse.
I'm not sure why the washed out palette is the default.


top is fuse
bottom left is Speccy with RealSpectrum palette
bottom right is Speccy with default palette

Bright colours are definitely a lot less saturated than they should be.

[AlWo73]

Afternoon folks,

Just to let you know I've put 2 more reviews on my website this weekend.

From the mists of time boings Kosmic Kanga and there's also Zankle Soft's Sophia from 2017 (practically yesterday)

Link is:
https://sites.google.com/view/zxspectru ... 0ff86093_3

Thanks to my mate Dave for anchoring that link (no idea what that means)

Cheers,
AlWo73

[R-Tape]

I recently set up a website called ZX Spectrum- It Lives!!! it's packed with games reviews, with an emphasis on more obscure games, both new and ancient.

I missed this first time round. That's a little gem of a site secreted away on google sites. Thanks.

[Lee Bee]

Seems like an excellent site which I would enjoy reading, except… (if I may give some honest feedback)… my brain just can't cope with that kind of structure - huge, massive long pages containing multiple articles, all running into one another. I can't cope with it. I like everything to be compartmentalised, structured, one review per page.

I also hate scrolling. I'm prepared to scroll a little, especially when I know what the page contains and there's not going to be anything unexpected down the bottom. But I can't cope with pages which are that long! I also hate not being able to move between features by clicking a menu. In order to find anything I have to scroll up and down, searching, trying to make some sense of what the page contains. I just feel lost.

I also don't know what is meant by "Part 1", "Part 2" etc. Perhaps these were each new installments? But are such divisions relevant? Certainly not to a newcomer to the site. New content could be announced on a "news" or a "blog" style page?

Anyway, these are my own opinions for what it's worth. Others may disagree with me.